Monday, July 25, 2011

Rejoice! The lockout is over! It was made official today as the players accepted the deal from the owners. The lockout went on for 134 long days and was the longest in NFL history. This also means that a lot of new information will be coming out in the upcoming days fantasy football wise that will have big affects on the fantasy football rankings, so be sure to check back for those changes. Also I have been working on a big project so stay tuned for that. In this article I'm going to go over some of the key points of the deal as well as what will happen in the next few days.

Key Points of the deal

The deal doesn't expire until the end of the 2020 season.

All drafted players sign 4 year contracts. There is also an option to add a 5th year for first rounders.

Free agents are unrestricted after four seasons. Restricted for the first three.

Around 1 billion dollars will be added to retiree benefits fund over the next 10 years.

After a catastrophic injury a player will get a million dollars or half of his current salary the following year. Two years after the injury he will get 500 thousand dollars or 30% of his salary.

Teams will pay 99% of salary cap this year and the next (averaged throughout the league, not individually). In 2013 they will begin paying only 95% until the end of the 2020 season. The cap is about 120 million.

Individually Teams are required to pay 89% of the salary cap to the players averaged over 4 year periods from 2013-2016, and from 2017-2020. This should make for interesting 2016 and 2020 seasons.

Because of the cut in rookie salaries more money will be spent on veteran contracts.

The off-season is 5 weeks shorter. Limits have been placed on practice time.

Whats Next?

Tuesday July 26th, 2011: Teams begin signing their own free agents and rookies as well as negotiating trades. For more on free agency check out Notable Free Agents.

Wednesday July 27-29th, 2011: The first sets of training camps will open. All training camps are set to start on different dates depending on when the first preseason game is for that team in order to give each team the same amount of practices.

Friday July 29th, 2011: All of free agency is open and player bonuses will be paid.